June 22, 2013

Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room: A lesson in Digital Literacy

A good lesson in digital literacy was outlined on the BBC
website last week dispelling the myth that the poem “Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow
Room” was written by William
Blake (an English poet from the 19th Century). It was in fact
written by Nancy Willard and was first published in 1981 in an anthology called
“A Visit to William Blake's Inn”.

However for some reason
the poem started to be attributed to Blake around 2001 and due to the power of
the Internet has become somewhat of an urban myth. As a result websites across
the English-speaking world are littered with references to this as a poem by
Blake, from individual school anthologies to state publications.

For example:

A special reading programme for gifted
pupils in Illinois asks pupils to talk about the poem

Instructions for teachers in a Kentucky
school district use it as a classroom example

A teachers' resource book from a major
publisher recommends it

Education agencies in the US states of
Texas and Louisiana promote the teaching of this supposed work by Blake

A US state university worksheet gives
students the poem as an example of a style of writing

Anyway, after seeing the poem attributed
to Blake. Thomas Pitchford, a
librarian in a Hertfordshire secondary school, concluded that the style bore
little relation to the poet's other work. As a result he has been trying to
contact the authors of the websites who miss-attributed the work (including a couple
of international publishers!).

What is nice about this
example (and there are lots of others) is how Mr Pitchford uses Critical Literacy to recognise and
expose the miss-information.

Improving Critical
Literacy needs to be a priority of any school who is serious about third millennium
learning.